


Double Edged Knives

by eternal_optimist



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Assassins & Hitmen, F/M, You know something is wrong when professional killers are saving the day, everything is not okay, this was a terrible idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 03:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11935674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternal_optimist/pseuds/eternal_optimist
Summary: Caroline comes across some data that she finds alarming and uses the gifts her mutation grant her to try and uncover what is going on around her.And Klaus who was already digging himself joins her.The world rests in a pair of two bloodied hands. Not that it knows or anything.





	Double Edged Knives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beautifulstronglight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifulstronglight/gifts).



> In this AU, Klaroline and Co. are mutants working as a shadow organisation to the government, just in case some get confused about the specifics, the rest I hope would be explained in the fic, make sure to tell me if you have any questions. 
> 
> Thanks a lot for garglyswoof, who offered tons of advice <3
> 
> Have fun!

She watched as her target moved leisurely through the crowded street, adopting a casual strut that she guessed was fake.

No matter though.

The arrow in her hand was adjusted until she was sure it would be a quick, clean kill, the bow’s strap stretching in accordance.

With a cynical last glance, she shot.

Perfect hit. Not that she expected any different.

* * *

“Had a fun night?” Klaus asked the minute she set foot in the vast building of the government facility. She huffed and paid him no mind.

His footsteps behind her did not retreat, and when she found quiet sanctuary where no eyes could see them, she turned to him.

“I’m sorry. Did you want something?”

Besides what he’d been relentlessly goading her about for the last year?

He was an accomplished killer, his methods volatile and with an edge of darkness that left even her cold sometimes. Practically unstoppable, too, what with his ability to project force fields that could not be penetrated by anything.

And he had a particular interest in her.

Not that she'd noticed. Or anything.

“Who were you assigned to?”

She gave him a flat look, “You know that’s confidential information.”

His hands dug into her right arm as she moved to walk away, fingers tight, not enough to hurt, but to give a warning. “Now, now, love. Let’s not be rude.”

Caroline thought long and hard of hitting him square in the jaw but decided against it, instead straining her muscles to relax.

“Get your hands off,” she ordered.

He did so, eyes narrowed.

“You could just make this easier on both of us.”

“And pass on the opportunity to piss you off? No, thanks,” she said sarcastically.

She tugged her arm free, hoping that the smile on her face burned, and left him standing there alone.

* * *

Caroline flicked through the pages of her folder in her hands, reading the data provided to her by her superiors.

When had she turned into this? A paid mercenary for the government?.

Probably around the time the world went to hell.

‘Salvatore Inc.: confirmed of being engaged in human trafficking. Run by two brothers; the older is suspected of dealing with drugs, while the younger has the main access to the company.’

Inspecting the pictures closely, she memorized each of their features.

‘Eluded capture by the authorities.’

“Well, this will be pleasant,” she muttered.

“What will?” Bonnie asked as she entered the room.

“My new assignment.”

“Oh, you'll be fine,” Bonnie said, rubbing her back comfortingly.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the files thrown all over the place, floating through the air, arranging themselves on the shelves impeccably.

She rolled her eyes, “Stop showing off.”

“Uh-” Bonnie trailed off, with an expression of careful thought on her face. “No.”

“Hey, you don't need to flame our jealousy just because you managed to get the cool superpower.”

Bonnie laughed, “You have cool superpowers, too.”

“I have the same job as that of a security camera,” she said flatly. “It's true, I hit my activation button, travel backwards in time and watch past events unfold, I can blend in, sure, but I can't change anything. It sucks.”

“And you can't even buy those cute Jimmy Choo’s we found on the Internet after they went off sale.”

She snorted, disgruntled.

Someone knocked on the door, Bonnie telling them to enter, and Liv came in.

“For you,” she said as she handed a pale pink disk to Caroline, who took it and automatically inserted it in her laptop.

“Thanks,” she said as an afterthought.

With a quick glance at the contents to memorise the date and the time, she ejected the disk out and burned it.

* * *

Normal rounds of security milled around the Salvatore mansion, bodyguards on high alert.

Half of the guards walked in regular circles, while the rest stood in their places resolutely. Some, Caroline suspected, not even bothering to blink.

She snuck inside the buildings easily enough after checking the pattern of the patrols. The house was silent, except for the occasional movement of servants.

Breathing deeply, but quietly, she braced her muscles and stuck to the shadows, making her way upstairs. The data provided a plan of the mansion; both the study and the Salvatore’s respective bedrooms were on the same floor, meaning her kills should be swift and smooth.

That was no reassurance whatsoever.

Things were quiet, far too quiet for her taste.

She reminded herself that the gun strapped to her side was ready to fire whenever.

The floor creaked as feet moved.

Something, like a swish or a thump, echoed through the hallway.

She froze.

On instinct, she felt her body springing up in alertness, hand blindly reaching for her makeshift darts.

Nothing happened, and the house resumed its loud silence. Caroline hesitantly took a step forward, and encouraged by the nothingness that replied, continued on. She crept into the study - or she hoped it was that, at least - but it was dark, silhouettes covering the walls.

“So our informant was right, weren't they?”

Caroline felt her heart stopping in her chest, throat parched and dry and oh god - she was discovered.

“It would seem so,” said the other male voice.

The door creaked as it was shut closed. Her mind, the part that was not nearly hyperventilating in panic, thought wryly of how cliché the whole scene was.

The sound of a pistol loading broke her out of her reverie and she dodged as a bullet fired her way.

She aimed her own gun straight at where the voice came from, edging closer to the window as she prepared to break it and jump.

A sharp pain in her arm dulled her plans. Numbly, she looked down to see a blunt diamond-like dart sticking out of her skin, a pale blue glow surrounding one of the men's hands, and she watched as another dart formed above his outstretched arm.

Great; the Salvatores were mutants.

She groaned inwardly at her luck, but didn't take the dart out of her arm; that would make for quite some blood lost.

Her body settled in its position, any sudden movements ceasing.

“So our killer gave up?” one of them spoke, a taunt clear in his voice. “Shame, I expected a much more interesting fight.”

“I'll make sure to arrange that next time,” Caroline bit out, tone scathing, then rolled her eyes at her unwillingness to back down.

The other one chuckled just before the window panes smashed into thousands of tiny crystals, the crash loud in her ears.

She hissed at the fire spreading through her veins. Dimly, she watched as the doors were forced off of their hinges and, as if in slow motion, her targets were pushed out of the room.

Then, she knew no more. 

* * *

Caroline blinked slowly as she woke, aware of how unfamiliar the bed she was resting on was. In one quick motion, she sat up and turned to one side of it.

Her muscles were aching and her arm was hurting badly. She guessed by now that it must be infected, a side effect of unnaturally lethal weapons. Though the darts that had pierced her arms had looked like ice, she couldn't be entirely sure.

If it was one of her _good_ days the probability of it being poisonous, of her having run into a pair of poison manipulators was high.

The door opened and Klaus waltzed in, looking perhaps more informal than she'd ever seen him in a Henley and a pair of jeans. Subtly, she studied his attire.

“Ah, you're awake.”

He shot her a small smile. She ignored the fluttering in her stomach.

“What am I doing here?”

Klaus sighed and shook his head in mock disappointment. “Not even a thank you. Where are your manners, love?”

She dug her fingers in her palm, resisting the urge to retort.

“Why am I here?” she repeated.

“Well, you're injured.”

“Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn’t noticed,” she deadpanned. Her arm prickled with pain, as if on command.

He chuckled, though she suspected he hadn't meant to. “Sit still,” he ordered as he approached her, a bandage in hand.

Glaring was all she could do to stop herself from snarling at him “hell no”. But Klaus was rather gentle in how he wrapped her wound, tying it around her upper arm and putting some medical plaster on it.

She snuck some glances at him from under her lashes, trying to figure out how to best voice her suspicions while getting her answers.

He sighed, “Just spit it out, Caroline.”

Well, when he put it like that.

“How did you know where I was?” she asked, then backtracked. “It was you, wasn't it?”

“Yes it was,” he replied. “Stay still,” he ordered when she flinched in dismay.

“As for knowing where you were, that was somewhat of a hassle. I would have had a much easier time if you’d just told me. I had to break into one of the high profile computers.”

At that, her eyebrows arched upward.

“You must have really wanted that information,” Caroline said.

“I had some nefarious deeds to do.” His tone was teasing and deliberately light, but she saw a small amount of eagerness there as well.

“What deeds?” she demanded, eyes narrowed slightly as she stood up and crossed her arms.

Klaus sighed, “Honestly, a little trust, love.”

“I'm not going to trust when you're being so sneaky.”

“Funny words, from a paid killer.”

She bristled. “What are you talking about? I kill people who deserve it; drug dealers, corrupt politicians... and mad scientists, occasionally.”

“You seem to have questionable morals, love.”

The irony at such a statement coming from Klaus of all people was not lost on her. “At least I have them, which is more than I can say for you.”

“Touché,” he said with an air of complete nonchalance.

Caroline glared.

“What happened to the Salvatores?”

Klaus didn't stray from adjusting the bandages around her arm, and as seconds passed she thought he wasn't going to answer. He made one last alteration and stood up from the bed.

“There, make sure not to expose it to the air for at least a week. I'm not exactly sure what was in those makeshift arrowheads and the computer can't find an exact answer but your arm should be fine.”

She stood up too, about to ask the question again when he walked to a refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water.

“As for your dearest friends, I reckon they disappeared and are laying low. They knew you were coming after them and were prepared to both kill you and make it seem normal or at the very least a form of self-defense.”

He paused. taking a sip of water, “Now I don't know about you love, but doesn't the fact they were completely prepared even though exactly five people know anything about any assignment and no one else seem a little fishy?”

She pondered his words in silence.

* * *

“He is _so_ up to something.”

“I know,” Bonnie said. She looked up at her in surprise. “You said that one hundred and thirty five times already.”

She scowled at her friend's jab at her _slightly_ obsessive behaviour. But her brain had been going back and forth, trying to puzzle out clues from Klaus’s words, to no avail.

“This is getting annoying.”

Bonnie gave a non-committal noise. “Hey, Caroline. Come look at this.”

She stood up and approached the desk Bonnie was working on, eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed together. An expression that she too donned as she examined the file on the computer.

“Well, this is weird,” she muttered.

“Understatement of the century, half of this data shouldn't be possible, I am the one who helps you write all of this half the time, numbers and events and everything and I remember these cases-” Bonnie motioned towards three consecutive columns on the screen, “-specifically. We stayed up all night and I memorized most of this.”

Caroline ran her tongue over the edge of her teeth. “What do you think is going on?”

“I have no idea,” her friend said, a familiar glint in her eyes that she knew meant Bonnie would be doing everything in her power to find out. “Excuse me.”

The door shut after Bonnie with a click. Caroline settled in front of the computer’s screen, re-reading.

Something was definitely up, Caroline thought, and she wasn't going to sit by when her means of knowing what were sharp and clear.

* * *

She felt her own room re-materialize around her and she blinked, trying to clear out the accustomed fuzziness that always accompanied her trips.

Her fingers rubbed at her head against the impending headache that was building faster than she could say kaboom. She made her way through the corridors, passing agents as she went, greeting them with a simple hello, and trying to keep the way her lips trembled from becoming too obvious.

Unfortunate side effect of jumping through portals of time and attempting to uncover what was looking to be an international issue of security.

“Hey, Caroline,” a voice called, making her stop in her steps to look back at the source. Tyler sprinted towards her, looking a little worn out.

“Hey. Is everything alright?”

“Boss has an assignment for you, asked for you everywhere. Where the hell have you been?” her friend asked.

Caroline stifled the short burst of laughter that wanted to spring from her throat as she contemplated, not for the first time, if her colleagues kept saying Boss to make themselves feel ominous.

“You know, here and there.”

“Here and there,” he repeated exasperated, rolling his eyes. “Well, please come back to the planes of this building as soon as you're able to.”

“Okay,” she said cheerfully. “Twenty-fourth floor as usual?”

“Yeah. Excuse me, I have to go.”

She walked along the familiar path towards the training room, then, after ensuring no one was paying a particularly close watch on her, turned towards the elevators.

Pressing her finger over the under-earth levels, she closed her eyes as the elevator’s doors dinged and closed.

It stopped momentarily, and she straightened in her place. The doors opened.

And Klaus walked in. Not at all what she needed.

“Hello, Caroline,” he said, his tone much too bright to be sincere. She swept her gaze over him quickly, noticed the way he stood somewhat stiffly and how his shoulders seemed to be tense.

“Are you alright?”

He gave her a strange look.

“Why would I not be?”

“You seem a little… off.”

“I am perfectly fine, Caroline,” he said. “Although I am flattered by your concern.”

She scoffed, “Oh, please. I was just worried if anybody might end up dead because you were feeling perky.”

The elevator doors sprang open, and Klaus strode in step with her, confident and proud.

“What about you?”

The question almost made her miss a step and tumble over.

“What do you mean?”

“You haven't been away lately, have you?” he continued on, completely at ease with his surroundings. “No portals through time and turning back the clock?”

“That's none of your business. I don't ask you how many people are injured because of your shields, do I? Besides that's confidential.”

“Sweet Caroline,” said Klaus. She vehemently squashed her rising ire at the way his words sounded like a honeyed melody. “We both know that there's nothing confidential about your trips.”

Caroline felt the clicks of her heels on the floor getting louder in her ears.

“Well,” she ran her tongue over the seam of her lips. “I have some questions that nobody seems interested in answering so I thought I'd ask my best friend, time.”

She stared defiantly, and Klaus’s jaw worked before striding away.

She wondered, but no, it couldn't be. 

* * *

“Did you find anything?” Caroline asked days later, the silence a little too loud in her ears. Across from her, Bonnie shook her head in denial, black shadows peeling their way under her eyelids.

“No.”

The regular thumps and patter of footsteps resumed outside.

She wondered if anyone was feeling the storm coming, or some variation. Like a disease spreading.

Okay, so maybe she was getting a little ahead of herself.

It wasn't like there was an apocalypse knocking at their door. At this very moment at least.

Someone was digging themselves deep into the government and she suspected - knew - that the possibility of it coming crumbling down was very real.

Or maybe someone did know; her thoughts flashed to Klaus and the suspicious way he had been behaving for the past weeks. How he, like them, seemed to have an agenda to know more about the events unfolding.

With a noise of deep frustration erupting from her throat, she slammed open her laptop for the hundredth time and made to comb for clues - again.

A thought strayed past her mind, and she wondered how could no one realize what Bonnie and her already found evidence of.

But people rarely saw things they didn't want to. 

* * *

Klaus and her found themselves in a training room wide enough to fit an audience for a concert months later.

Still with nothing uncovered and more obstacles in front of her and Bonnie than not. Oh, and the political climate had gone to hell along with the government.

Not that anyone noticed or anything.

“So, found any secret plots yet?”

“Nope,” she answered as she kicked the punching bag hard enough for it to sail through the air.

She sighed.

“I have a proposition for you, Caroline.”

At that, she stood a little straighter and turned to face him, expression closed off and arms crossed at her chest. Klaus only used her name in moments of seriousness or anger and it could not be the latter so it was surely the former.

And a proposition was just another red light on it is own.

“What?”

He motioned towards the door and began walking.

“Come.”

A lesson she had learnt quite early in her life - a day always had the ability to turn stranger and weirder at any turn.

* * *

The deal was quite simple.

Klaus accompanied her on her trips through time intervals, pointing out rather minuscule details that escaped her notice and exhibiting a not too little amount of gloating at the fact.

Which she ignored.

She drew the line at his usefulness when he asked her to review the timeline she’d already put together with her targets and their date of death and the events after. Decisions made, that should not have been able to be executed without them pushing for it.

By now, Caroline thought she had a clearer picture of what was happening, and the thought and preparation behind it made her head spin, stomach a little queasy. Someone changed her numbers not for a simple ploy and not for a simple diversion.

She considered herself competent enough at her job and all her chosen targets were indicative of that. Whoever was behind all this, by one means or another, had managed to take over the power granted to those in certain positions, making it that much easier to move the chess pieces to their liking.

And have a foil at the ready, too. With one decree out, orchestrated through the many people they had under their grasp, they could distract the entire country long enough to make it fall.

So she stomped on her pride, and took him back.

“You know, this is much easier with us both working on our little search,” he said as he stood observing the re-done colour coded sheets with all the new information they’d found.

Caroline did not admit that he was right, though she smiled at the joke he cracked afterwards.

* * *

Of course, she thought sarcastically, it was only inevitable that one of their reconnaissance missions involved having to sneak inside a gala.

“You look beautiful,” Klaus whispered offhandedly. She looked up in surprise at the statement, momentarily suspended from the uncomfortableness - exhilaration - she was feeling being surrounded by fancy dresses and classical music. People were dancing in coordinated steps beside them.

It reminded her of home.

“Thank you,” she said, voice a little hoarse. Klaus’s eyes flashed with worry, making her clear her throat.

They were barbs traded in hallways. Not this.

(Both, actually).

“You don’t look too bad yourself,” she joked, pointedly glancing at his perfectly ironed suit and perfectly matched tie.

She looked down at her dress, the deep shade of burgundy stark against her complexion, and felt impressed at how quickly they had managed to put something together that looked so impeccable.

Klaus twirled her in time with the beat.

They danced for a few minutes, and try as she might, she couldn’t stifle the snide remarks on the dresses of the others and how poorly they were while he chuckled under his breath.

“May I have your attention, please,” the host called for the guests, and they redirected their attention to their job.

* * *

“So,” Caroline spoke, wanting to break the silence. Her legs were dangling off the edge of the roof, the sky starry and clear. The traffic on the bridge across the river seemed as snarled as it was every day. “What are your plans now?”

Klaus just made a low noise of both amusement and confusion.

“Well, we captured the big bad-” she said, a faraway look in her eyes as she recounted the events of the last few days. “-who happened to be one of the biggest heads in our most prestigious government and was manipulating the entire system so he could take over,” she paused in the middle of her one-breath rant, and pondered something thoughtfully.

“Kinda like Voldermort actually.”

He frowned at the reference, not understanding.

“And we pretty much worked on it for like half a year and you did so for a year before that, which requires a lot of obsessive energy actually and you don't really seem to be the type to be content with ‘normal’ activities, so what's your plan?”

A sort of awkward silence settled between them in which he looked on uncertainly before his face cleared.

“I could always start by taking you on a date.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I hope that this was enjoyable and that the plot was interesting, I admit I had some problems during writing but I am pleased by the end result nonetheless. It was quite different from what I usually write, especially since I haven't written klaroline as assassins before.
> 
> Again if you have any inquiries, tell me and I'll make sure to answer them to the best of my abilities. 
> 
> Anyway, happy vcay exchange everyone. Make sure to spread the love.


End file.
